The offer of a free PC download of classic action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) crashed Epic Games’ online store on Thursday, May 14.
Down for a good chunk of the day, though apparently up and running the last time we looked, the site was overwhelmed by eager gamers keen to get a free copy of Rockstar Games’ popular offering that has already sold more than 100 million copies globally in its seven-year lifespan.
Epic posted a tweet acknowledging the issue, saying it was currently experiencing high traffic on its store, adding, “We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We’ll provide an update as soon as we can.”
We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store.
We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We’ll provide an update as soon as we can.
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) May 14, 2020
Several hours later, it followed up with another tweet saying it was still working to resolve the problem. At the time of writing, it appears that the store and launcher are operational again, though Epic’s status page describes the former as having “degraded performance.”
Epic announced the free offer on Wednesday, giving PC gamers until May 21 to download GTA V via the company’s games-launcher app. But when the offer went live a day later, its servers clearly weren’t ready for the sudden influx of download requests, with many gamers left frustrated as they repeatedly hit the refresh button.
Perhaps the company should’ve realized just how popular its free offer would be with folks. After all, last year the free Diamond Casino & Resort update for GTA Online delivered the biggest player numbers for GTA Online for a single day, and also for a single week, since the online component of GTA V launched in October 2013.
The good news is that the link for the free download of GTA V now appears to be working, so if you’re hoping to nab a free copy, best give it a go now.
